Originally Posted by
Ken hAAmer
How do you figure?
The population of the greater Vancouver area is a little over 2 million. The population of Seattle is a little bit more. Throw in the various small communites in between and you're probably looking at 5 million.
Now what's the population of the greater Montreal area? And all those smaller but still significant centres like Cornwall and surrounding area? All those communities in northern NY, Vermont, and New Hampshire? Even in the rural communites south of Montreal there are a lot more people than there are in the area outside Greater Vancouver. Past Whistler or Hope there ain't nuthin! Go a couple km north of my office in North Van and you'll find nothing but mountains for hundreds of km.
And forget Federal Way, WA -- even people in Renton/SeaTac are a lot, lot further from BLI than anyone in Montreal is from Plattsburg.
The access roads to PBG aren't as good as BLI. Look at the map. Very few people on the east side of Lake Champlain would drive around the big lake and then cross at a very limited points just to get to PBG. So there are probably ferries, but I bet you they cost money.
There are many small airports in the NY and some probably receive some sort of federal or local subsidy for air service. So they will have cheaper airfares and thus people wouldn't drive to PBG just to save a few dollars.
Oh, and people from Cornwall would probably drive to OGS, Massena, Norfolk or other airports instead of PBG, which seems to be more than an hour away on highways and not freeways.